Having successfully reinvented themselves on their previous album Walking Wounded with a shift from bedsit bossanova to drum'n'bass-powered torch-pop, the enduring partnership of Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn has been further tempted by the dance side of the force.
Which means Temperamental just isn't.
In fact, it's so even-tempered inits blend of fuller-bodied house beats, less spindly drum'n'bass patterns and Thorn's icy singing that it can border on the pleasant but dreary.
It's readily apparent that there aren't any memorable songs this time. Actually, there just aren't as many songs as such.
On Compression, for example, Thorn all but disappears beneath an unremarkable seven-minute workout.
It starts promisingly on the buoyant Five Fathoms, where it achieves Wounded's balance of tension between Thorn's ruminative singing and insistent rhythms. So does the closing Future of the Future, a collaboration with house-meister Deep Dish.
Elsewhere, the title and grim urban setting of Hatfield 1980 reminds us that Thorn and Watt have been together since those post-punk days, and the tale told by The Lullaby of Clubland neatly doubles as a soap opera from under the strobe lights.
Even so, for most of Temperamental it sounds like EBTG have now become a ghost to their machines.
